Archive for 'dfid'
Wireframes? Specs? Ha.
I've added a lengthy comment to Stephen Hale's recent blog post about preparations for a much-needed redesign of the FCO's blogs.fco.gov.uk site. Unfortunately, the FCO's platform did horrible things to the formatting, so even if it's only to make it legible, I thought I'd echo one of the more controversial points I made in that [...] read on »
Building DFID's new consultation platform
A few months back, I helped the Department For International Development set up an online consultation site for their white paper on Eliminating World Poverty. We used WordPress (obviously), plus Steph Gray's Commentariat theme (with a few tweaks). The site was well received, and had close to 500 reader comments, many of them lengthy. So [...] read on »
Puffbox's social intranet for government
Last week, we finally completed the longest-running and most ambitious WordPress-based project in Puffbox history. Back in February, with snow on the ground, we started developing the concept of a self-contained 'social intranet' platform to be used by staff across government - DFID, BERR (as was), FCO and elsewhere - involved in the many facets [...] read on »
Civil servants are people too
Nice to see Downing Street getting into the spirit of Red Nose Day... Well done to those responsible, I know who you are. I've never quite decided whether or not it's appropriate for government sites to do things like putting up 'Christmas decorations'; I think I'm OK with it, as long as it's professionally done. [...] read on »
DFID's new group blog function
We rolled out a fairly modest enhancement to the DFID Bloggers website this week: probably unnoticed by most users, but one I'm quite proud of. At its heart, the DFID site is a group blog; but we do a few things to present it as a network of individual blogs by individual bloggers. Then the [...] read on »
DFID redesigned
This week saw the next phase in the incremental redesign of the Department For International Development's website. It's a much airier, brighter look than before, and with a YouTube video front and centre, plus all those drop shadows, rounded corners and various JQuery effects, it feels bang up to date. There's a new 'top layer' [...] read on »
DFID Bloggers: tales from the front line
The latest Puffbox project gets a soft launch today, ahead of a formal (and hopefully high-profile) announcement next week. DFID Bloggers is a satellite site off the main Department for International Development website, and follows in the FCO's footsteps of giving front-line staff a blog on which to talk about their work and experiences. In [...] read on »
A couple of Commentariat launches
A key element of the (re)statement of UK government open source policy the other week was the need to 'embed an open source culture of sharing, re–use and collaborative development'. That may have seemed like a waste of ink/bandwidth to those outside government; but I can assure you, I've sat in too many wheel reinvention [...] read on »